Chapter 13
Stiff gusts of wind blew through the tall oak trees near the water’s edge, occasionally eliciting a moaning lament at the air’s harmonic passage through the branches. It was a partially cloudy night with only a sliver of a moon peeking through the overcast. The lights from the surrounding homes on the harbor twinkled and danced as the roiling surface of the water reflected them up, moving in time with the swell from the harbor mouth as it surged against the outcropping shore of Point Piper, as the upscale neighborhood was called – a nub of land thrusting into the water, creating Double Bay on one side and Rose Bay on the other.
Three tough-looking guards prowled the grounds of the target’s home, two stationed front and back, with one circulating around. It was a lot of security for a relatively modest home in a safe area. The neighbors had to wonder who the occupant was. The men did their best to appear discreet but they were obviously trained killers with military bearings and the tell-tale bulges of handguns under their windbreaker jackets.
This was the easiest duty any of them had ever had. Endless hours of nothing guarding a nobody from imagined threats that never materialized. They’d gotten complacent over the nine months they’d been working the gig, which was understandable given the uneventful nature of the job. But if it made the man happy, it was his money to spend as he liked and they weren’t going to complain. For fifteen thousand American dollars a month apiece, they’d put on a trapeze performance or ride unicycles on a tightrope every evening if that’s what their patron wanted.
It was quiet at one a.m. on a weeknight, with very few cars winding their way along the New South Head road that tracked the coastline. Sydney’s suburbs were asleep, the citizenry enjoying its well-deserved rest in the privileged enclave.
A small black inflatable dinghy moved towards the shore, slicing through the small swells as it made its silent way through the night. A hundred yards off the point, the operator dropped an anchor into the water before cutting the little electric motor. He sat, rising and falling with the waves, getting a sense for the amplitude and acclimating himself.
The waterside of the target’s home glimmered through the luminescent green of the night vision scope. El Rey could easily make out the sentry, sitting on the rear deck, smoking a cigarette and reading a book. Very unprofessional, but then again, given that the biggest threat the security team thought they were likely to encounter was an enraged koala on a eucalyptus-fueled rampage, he could appreciate their lackadaisical attitude. It would be the last mistake any of them ever made. But still, it was understandable.
The crosshairs of the modified M4 assault rifle’s night scope bounced up and down from the waves, the weapon made ungainly from the additional weight of the long flash-suppressing silencer affixed to the barrel’s end. The surface movement would decrease the likely accuracy, but he’d spent a few hours in a rural area out of town sighting it in with Victor yesterday for exactly the required distance and the margin of error was acceptable – down to a variance of two inches. An additional factor would be the brisk breeze, and he automatically made a mental adjustment for it. It was blowing from the harbor mouth toward the point at his back, so shouldn’t have a huge effect.
He’d spent the prior morning loading twenty shells with a special blend of a more powerful charge to compensate for the velocity difference the silencer introduced, which had proved worthwhile when he was sighting it in. The higher-powered payload attenuated any distortion introduced by the device. He’d flattened the tips of each slug a little and carved an X into the top before filling the indentations with solder and filing them so there would be no danger of a jam. Nothing could ruin a well-planned assault like a faultily loading weapon, and so he’d spent hours on the task before taking the gun out and putting it through its paces.
He watched as the roaming sentry approached the seated guard, presumably to ask for a cigarette, because the seated man reached into his breast pocket and offered him one from his pack. El Rey regarded the two sentries through the scope, taking care to close his eyes while the seated man lit the other’s smoke. It wouldn’t do to ruin his night vision with the match’s flare.
As the pair chatted lazily on the rear stone patio of the darkened house, El Rey gently squeezed the trigger. The standing man crumpled next to the seated guard, his chest exploding outward and onto his stunned partner; the fragmented slug having torn through his back, the shards exiting his front along with chunks of his pulmonary system and heart. El Rey caressed the trigger again, gently, as a lover might the receptive lips of his mate, and the seated man’s throat blew onto the heavy stucco house’s rear façade. That left the guard in front, who would be getting a little apprehensive within a few minutes when the roaming man didn’t return on his appointed rounds.
El Rey waited patiently for the inevitable, and was rewarded after seven minutes by the sight of the third sentry rounding the corner of the house. Another well-placed shot took him down before he could draw his weapon. The assassin checked his watch and smiled to himself – in just ten minutes, the threat from the security force had been neutralized. He watched the grisly tableau for a few moments to ensure nobody was moving, then placed the rifle in the bottom of the boat before shrugging into a scuba harness. He double-checked the waterproof bag for the cell phone and two pistols before propelling himself backwards with a dull splash into the cold water of the bay.
It took him three minutes to swim the distance, and when he pulled himself onto the shallow beach in front of the house, he paused to unclasp the tank and remove the scuba rig, dropping it where he stood on the sand, along with his flippers. They, like the boat, would be recovered later that night by Victor’s clean-up men, so he wasn’t worried about leaving any traces.
He padded in his neoprene dive booties to the grass that separated the patio from the beach and extracted a silenced Beretta 92FS pistol from the bag. Quickly gliding to where the corpses lay, he put a muffled slug into each man’s head, purely out of professional diligence. There was nothing more disruptive to a well-planned operation than a wounded man with a gun exhibiting second-wind heroics. The niggling housekeeping chores concluded, El Rey studied the locking mechanism of the rear pocket doors before fishing out a foot-long stainless steel strip that looked much like a ruler, which is what in fact it was, albeit modified with a jagged hook ground out of one end. He slid it carefully through the center section, and with an abrupt pull, opened the lock. Back into the bag it went, and he fished out the second pistol – an odd-looking gas-powered gun that fired a horse-tranquilizer dart.
The house blueprints Victor had sourced from the building department were still fresh in his mind as he stealthily ascended the stairs to where he knew the master bedroom was located. The neoprene soles of his booties made his steps silent – a fortunate by-product of his unfashionable outfit. As he drew nearer to the partially opened master bedroom door, his ears pricked up, listening for any tell-tale warning signs. Satisfied that the house was still, he pushed the door open, only to be rewarded with a creak from the hinges, corroded by the salt air.
The figure on the bed stirred at the sound and then lunged for the dresser. El Rey fired the dart gun left handed at him – the dart missed by a scant few inches and embedded itself into the pillow. The target swung around at him with a silenced pistol and began firing even as El Rey made a split-second judgment call and charged him rather than shooting him. He ignored the white hot stab of pain that lanced through his upper leg as he hurled himself through the air at the prone, firing El Chilango, and within a heartbeat had dislodged the gun and was grappling with his left hand for the dart as he slammed his Beretta butt into the man’s head with his right. The struggle was over in a matter of seconds, and the former cartel boss slumped into the mattress as the dart’s soporific venom, stabbed into the side of his neck, found its way into his bloodstream.
El Rey lay still on top of the target for a few moments, assessing the throbbing pain from his thigh. He felt blood s
eeping from the wound – but it wasn’t spurting, which meant the projectile hadn’t hit an artery. Still, it was bad, and the pain was significant. After looking around the room, he rose and limped to the master closet and flicked on the light. His eyes scanned the rows of neatly hanging clothes until they alighted on a bathrobe with a sash for cinching the waist. He pulled the fabric strip loose, then pulled drawers open until he found some white cotton undershirts, all folded in neat little parcels. He grabbed one and tied it in place using the sash, studying the makeshift bandage with acerbic satisfaction. It would do until he could get medical attention.
He returned to the dark bedroom and reached into the waterproof bag dangling from his dive belt to retrieve the cell phone. Peering at the target’s inert form on the bed, he pressed a speed dial number. Victor’s voice answered.
“Front door. Two minutes. I’ve been hit, so I’ll need a medic as soon as possible,” El Rey whispered.
“Hit? How bad?”
“Small caliber pistol clipped me in the leg. Be here in two minutes, and send the cleanup crew to get the gear and the boat.”
“I’ll have the lads push the bodies into the bay as well, if yah don’t mind,” Victor suggested.
“No worries,” El Rey answered, in the ubiquitous manner he’d heard used countless times by the locals since his arrival.
Gimping over to the bed, he lifted El Chilango by both arms and dragged him roughly into the hall and then down the stairs. The man would be out cold for two hours, he knew, and when he awoke his head would feel like someone had hammered it with a board, which wasn’t far from the truth, given the gashes the pistol had left, the blood already coagulating and crusting where it had streamed down his face.
On the ground floor, he slid the inert body to the front entrance foyer and watched through the side window for the vehicle. Twenty seconds later, he saw an outline pull up. He swung the door open, to be greeted by the sight of Victor trotting from the black delivery van they’d arranged for the evening’s festivities. He took a hard look at El Rey, standing in the doorway with blood oozing through the T-shirt affixed to his leg, and then wordlessly went to El Chilango and began dragging him to the back of the van. El Rey limped over, helped get the target into the back, and climbed in after him.
“Get me a doctor. I think the bullet passed clean through, but I need to get cauterized and stitched up,” he instructed.
“I’ve got a call in. Should hear back any minute. Let’s do that before we hit the warehouse, shall we? I can secure our friend here so if he wakes up in the interim he can’t get up to any mischief,” Victor said.
“Good. Let’s go.”
Victor closed the back doors and ran around to the driver’s seat. In the blink of an eye they were headed down the carefully manicured street, bound for the main road. Victor was just turning onto the larger artery when his cell rang.
“Yeah. I need it now. Ten minutes out, maybe fifteen. Your shop? No worries,” Victor said, and hung up. He leaned towards the rear compartment. “We’ll swing by his office. He’s pretty good for this kinda thing,” Victor assured El Rey.
They drove through Sydney until they reached a rough-looking section, the buildings shabby and tattooed with graffiti. Victor pulled to the curb in front of a small storefront featuring photos of yellow Labrador puppies bounding about in a grassy meadow. A short, bald, overweight man stood in the doorway, fumbling for keys to open it. El Rey looked up when Victor eased the rear van doors open and gingerly slid himself out and onto the sidewalk, waving off the unspoken offer of assistance. He looked at the little man and then at the shop window, then glared at Victor.
“A veterinarian?” he whispered.
“Bloke’s top shelf. Have you running marathons in no time. Does all my sensitive jobs. No worries, mate. Nigel, come over and let’s get our man here inside,” Victor called out.
“I can make it. Let’s just get this over with,” El Rey hissed through clenched teeth.
He limped to the door, which Nigel had finally opened after locating the correct key.
“Name’s Nigel. Doctor Nigel to you,” he said, offering his hand.
“I’m shot in the leg. Let’s clean it and sew it up,” El Rey said, moving inside.
They walked to the back of the shop, where there was a small exam room with a stainless steel table in the center. Nigel flicked on the lights while Victor returned to the van to shackle their captive.
“Best get you up on the table, then. Let’s see what we’ve got here,” Nigel said, donning a disposable surgical apron and mask. He turned to where El Rey now lay and peered at the wound. “I’ll have to cut away your party dress, if you can deal with the loss.”
“Do what you have to do.”
Nigel expertly untied the dressing and snipped away the neoprene, cutting the entire wetsuit leg off just below the groin and pulling it off. Blood seeped slowly from the holes on both sides of El Rey’s thigh. Nigel moved to the medicine cabinet, filled a syringe with Novocain and injected it carefully on the edges of the wound, finishing by squirting some directly in. The pain receded, replaced by sweet numbness.
Nigel swabbed the bullet hole and then used a pair of forceps to examine it.
“You got lucky. Missed the bone, and nothing major hit other than muscle. It’ll smart for a bit, but I can stitch you up and you’ll be a new man in no time,” he assured El Rey. “The slug passed clean through so I’ll just dump some antiseptic in, give you some antibiotics, some orange juice, and do a bit of sewing. Job done, mate.”
“Give me two more syringes of the anesthetic, too. I need to do some more work tonight, and it’s helping.”
“Too right, then. Couple of sticks of ‘feel good’ to go. Can do. Now let’s close you, shall we?”
Fifteen minutes later, the wound had been tended. Nigel sprayed both stitched areas with a metallic silver spray and stood back to admire his handiwork. El Rey sat up and began drinking a bottle of orange juice Nigel had brought him. The vet handed him two bottles of pills and two full syringes.
“That there’s iron, for rebuilding your red blood cells, and that’s doxycycline. Take one every eight hours for ten days. The numbing juice should be good for an hour or two each go. I’d remember to use alcohol to sterilize the area before you inject, and lose the syringe after using it once. Don’t want to introduce any more germs than you need to, right? Now, if you’ll take down your suit, I need to give you a shot in the bum so you don’t die of sepsis.”
El Rey pulled down the zipper at the front of his neck and obliged. The injection in his ass hurt almost as much as the gunshot had. The pain subsided after thirty seconds, and he realized it was hot in the suit, so he left it unzipped when he pulled it back up.
“Are we done?” Victor asked, coming back in after eavesdropping on the discussion.
“Yep. He should rest for a few days. Call me if there’s any complications, like high fever or obvious signs of infection.” Nigel gave a wan smile. He fixed El Rey with a good-natured gaze, his eyes twinkling with merriment. “You’ll have a little pucker there, once you heal, to show the ladies. Cut out the stitches in seven days. Could do it in four, but seven’s better if you’re going to be walking around on it, which I imagine you will.”
“Thanks, Doc. You’re a dream,” Victor said, shaking Nigel’s hand. El Rey silently walked out of the room towards the front of the store, anxious to deliver his captive to the warehouse and fulfill his contract.
He was ready to get to work.